My First Reproduction! Super Mario Bros. 2j!

[bdlou]

After I saw all the amazing work alot of you have been doing, I got really excited about the world of reproductions. The first project I decided to take on start to finish was creating a Japanese Super Mario Bros. 2 cart that mirrored the original Super Mario Bros. cart, since it was the true sequel. (Yes, I've seen the debate in the other threads. Don't bring your holy war here.)

I will admit I am no soldering expert. I was originally using a copy of Bo Jackson's Baseball as the donor cart. I used 32-pin sockets, did the wiring, soldered it all down, and it worked! Some time between then and unsoldering, wiring and soldering the EPROMs down to the board, I seemed to have ruined the board. Or at least I thought I had. After unsoldering the second time, aside from breaking a pin off of the PRG EPROM, I accidentally ripped a trace of the board!

Fortunately I planned for this sort of error, and the final cart is using Bill Elliot's Nascar Challenge as a donor. Here are some pics of the near final product:











http://www.flickr.com/photos/98803290@N ... 438293895/

I couldn't have done this without the help of The Webmiester, who did a little hand holding and answered some novice questions I had.

Hope you like! I can't wait to bust this out at a game tournament I'm holding in a couple weeks!

[Ziggy]

Wow, nice label. Usually you see the "lost level" type of label for a SMB2j cart, but you went for the 8-bit NES style. I don't believe I've seen that before, I like it.

[noiseredux]

yeah the label looks great! Was that an official cover, or was it custom?

Also, I just consider both games to be sequels.

[bdlou]

yeah the label looks great! Was that an official cover, or was it custom?

Also, I just consider both games to be sequels.

Thanks for all the kind words both of you. I made this from "scratch". In essence, I started from a Super Mario Bros. label to get the font, layout, etc, then took a couple screen shots in FCEUX, then just starting cutting and pasting sprites around until I got what you see there.

This isn't the final label, as aside from the terrible job I did rounding the corners, I noticed that the Seal of Quality wasn't the same, as well as not noticing the "Made in Japan" was missing under the "Action Series" logo, and not having a serial number under the Seal of Quality. Also, I want to add the same streaks to Mario they drew on the original label.

[presicion25]

Nice work! The cart looks great. Its funny, I never knew the lost levels were the actual sequel to Super Mario Brothers and it being sequel to Mario Brothers. At least I think thats correct.

[sevin0seven]

awesome work! i miss playing the real cart of this game on the famicom...

[jeffro11]

Very nice!

[gravitone]

Great job on the label. One small suggestion: clean the donor cart before label transplant. That thing is downright disgusting.

[Hobie-wan]

Great job on the label. One small suggestion: clean the donor cart before label transplant. That thing is downright disgusting.

Indeed. The label design looks great. Just need to clean the cart shell and the pins on the board looks like they need a go too. When you redo the label with speed lines, attack that shell with an old toothbrush in the sink.

[bdlou]

Great job on the label. One small suggestion: clean the donor cart before label transplant. That thing is downright disgusting.

Indeed. The label design looks great. Just need to clean the cart shell and the pins on the board looks like they need a go too. When you redo the label with speed lines, attack that shell with an old toothbrush in the sink.

I agree 100%. I was so excited I didn't even notice until I took the pics. In my defense, the donor carts are all eBay purchases.